


I'll Come Crashing

by exyfexyfoxes



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AFTG Big Bang 2017, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Blood and Violence, Clubbing, Drugs, Frottage, Graphic Description of Corpses, Horror, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Violence, Sex, Swearing, blink-and-you'll-miss-it trans Jeremy, graphic description of plants strangling people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 04:43:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11707062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exyfexyfoxes/pseuds/exyfexyfoxes
Summary: Hades/Persephone in the modern world where Jean runs an underground club that herds the souls of the dead. It's a place where even gods die if they stay too long, regardless of how many pomegranate seeds they eat. Jean wants out. Jeremy wants in. Everybody wants them far away from each other.





	I'll Come Crashing

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, I was so fortunate to have the beautiful artwork of @gabriellajane and @queen-of-perplexity, you guys are wonderful <3  
> Secondly, this is an AU with an ostentatious A. It's a story about love but it's also a horror story and if there's anything you're particularly avoiding, here's a short list of triggers:  
> Drugs, alcohol, graphic violence, horror, body horror, swearing, graphic description of dead bodies, graphic description of plants strangling people, graphic descriptions of blind adoration, sex, frottage, mangled bodies, bloody stumps for limbs, electric shock
> 
> Title from the song I'll Come Crashing by A Giant Dog

They’d been dancing around each other for hundreds of years, so Jean felt comfortable taking an uninvited step into Jeremy’s penthouse apartment, with its glass ceiling and walls, and plants draped around the fan and through the handles of the cabinets. His boots clicked softly on the hardwood floors, and he accidentally nudged a sleeping cat, which let out a sleepy, rumbling purr before curling tighter into herself.

“People should not live like this,” Jean said, eying the mess of dishes and wisteria in the sink, and the moonlight speckled across the floor. “You’ve turned the place into a greenhouse.”

“I like it like this,” came the reply from the apartment’s only occupant, a boy sitting by an open window. Both legs were out, and a butterfly was pinned to his hair, alive. It squirmed desperately; delicate wings beating hard against blond.

“Doesn’t it get hot during the day?” Jean asked, pushing aside thick vines stemming from the hardwood floors. He stepped past a nest of birds, which all woke with a shudder. They screeched when they saw Jean, and one launched itself off the nest to flutter in his face.

“It has to,” said the boy, laughing as Jean attempted to swat the bird away without touching it. “Helps the plants grow.”

“ _You_ need help making plants grow?”

“I do after you come by,” the boy replied dryly, and they both looked at the path of shriveled vines and dead green in the shape of Jean’s footprints.

“Hm,” said Jean.

“ _Hm_ ,” echoed the boy. “ _Hm_ like ‘next time I’ll avoid the plants’ or _hm_ like ‘your home is weird, Jeremy. This is unsanitary, Jeremy. Where did all these animals come from, Jeremy?’”

Jean frowned.

“Your butterfly is going to kill itself,” he said.

“That’s why you came by?”

“No.”

The butterfly was unnaturally colored – a jade green body and iridescent slivers of blue sapphire for wings. It tugged hysterically, and Jean saw that it was attached to a rusted, sepia hair clip. Jeremy didn’t seem to notice it, his eyes trained on Jean.

“You were just thinking of me, then?” Jeremy’s eyes followed him as he crossed the room, coming to a stop near a plant by the window, growing out of actual thin air.

“You wish,” said Jean, ghosting a finger over purple petals. It looked like a petunia but not. It looked wrong but not. It looked beautiful but not, glittering in the moonlight like the tip of an axe.

“You can touch it if you want,” Jeremy said, “It’s one of mine. It won’t wilt.”

“Hm,” said Jean again, and let his hands drop to his side.

Jean wasn’t supposed to be here. Zeus and Poseidon didn’t want their third brother anywhere above ground, where he couldn’t herd the dancing souls of the dead under their watchful eyes.

“I thought you’d like that one.”

“I do like it. That’s why I’m not touching it.”

“It won’t die this time.”

Jean gave him a patient look. He remembered the first time he’d seen Jeremy. He couldn’t remember the place or the century, only the outstanding gold of Jeremy’s skin in the setting sunlight, the easy stretch of his smile, the friendly confidence in a room full of beautiful, vicious Gods. A glittering diamond sitting atop snow.

Jean couldn’t do much more than inhale the sight then; he was sitting with his brothers, who would notice if he left. But to draw his eyes away was to maybe lose sight of the stranger forever so he watched recklessly. He didn’t realize how shameless his eyes took Jeremy in until he saw the boy with the petal skin, soft as fresh bloom, glance back at him.

He held Jean’s gaze just long enough to acknowledge he’d noticed, and then turned back to his conversation. A hand pushed light hair from his eye. A second passed. His eyes flitted back to Jean.

Jean hadn’t looked away.

Now, though, he did, eying the birds he’d disturbed earlier. They had settled back to sleep, letting out high snores almost too soft to hear.

“I am Hades,” Jean said, answering the earlier question. “I’m here because you were thinking about death.”

Jeremy grinned but it was hard. “Only what I’d do if I had him.”

Jean rolled his eyes. "If there's no reason for me to be here, then I'm leaving."

The night was loud, louder than the day, Jean thought, even though they were in the city. Crickets made themselves known, as did the dead of night drunks and the sleepy cars carrying sleepy passengers down sleepy streets. But this high up, sound was distant, and most of the noise came from the inside of Jeremy's apartment. Despite the time, the bugs and the birds didn't seem to be sleeping.

The open window let out a deep groan, accompanied by a cold breeze that felt like the spring.

Jeremy's legs swung lazily from the window and he looked back at the night sky, not stopping Jean, appearing to forget about Jean entirely.

Jean didn't leave.

"If you're thinking about jumping, I'd do it pretty soon," Jean said, coming to stand next to him. "I have a schedule to keep."

Jeremy nudged himself forward.

"Asshole," said Jean, waiting. Jeremy grinned.

Jeremy couldn't die. He was the son of a god. If he fell, berries would spill onto the ground in lieu of blood and when he got up and dusted himself off, he'd leave a trail of pollen in his wake.

The strange plant next to Jeremy unfurled by itself, slowly.

"You should be able to touch what you want to touch." Jeremy's gaze darkened. "Especially the things you like."

"Flirt."

Jeremy smiled at him again, and made to slip from the window.

Jean's arm shot out, holding tight to Jeremy's bicep to steady him. As he did, his skin brushed the unnatural purple petals and the plan shriveled in on itself, tips blackening, and wrinkles forming from the contact.

They watched it die.

"I'll keep it on the nightstand," said Jean.

"Well, as long as there's a window nearby," said Jeremy.

Jean snorted despite himself, and took his hands off of Jeremy. Jeremy made a minute, disappointed noise.

Jean could touch Jeremy all he wanted. The plants would die, but Jeremy wouldn't feel a thing. The problem was in the fact that he wanted to, but if he did, he thought he'd never be able to get himself to stop. If they were mortal, it wouldn't matter. But Jean was Hades, and Jeremy was Persephone and everyone they knew hated them together.

"You two, you never learn."

Yellow light crept in from the doorway. While the ceiling fan wouldn't work, hopelessly entwined with greenery, the electricity still did.

They both turned.

Alvarez was the picture perfect ideation of nature and summer and youth. Her smile was blinding like Jeremy's - and no wonder. Demeter was the closest thing to family Jeremy had, though in Olympus, those lines were blurred a little.

She strode into the room, eyeing the trail of dead plants Jean left trailing from door to window. She leaned down to touch them and Jean looked away so he wouldn't have to see her bring them back to life.

Alvarez hesitated when she saw Jean's expression.

"Sorry," she said.

She loved Jean, but she loved Jeremy more. She knew firsthand that Jeremy would never survive where Jean lived.

"What were you doing?" she asked, making her way over to the window. Jean stepped aside to make room for her, and she gave him a warm smile. "You look good, Jean. Riko keeping you busy?"

Jean looked down at the dead flower and grunted an affirmative. Riko kept him plenty busy. Alvarez was Jeremy's best friend, but at times she felt more like a doting mother. He could feel her gaze on the number on his cheek. He lifted his eyes, and stood up straighter when he saw that he was right. The tattoos were cheesy, over the top, and completely in in 1987. The one, the two, and the three on Riko's, Kevin's and his cheek.

Tattoos were permanent, even on Gods. If he wanted, Jean could vanish it away with the swipe of his hand, but that would anger Riko and Jean had better things to do than deal with Riko's thunderous rage.

"I was just leaving," Jean told her, expecting to see approval. Curiously, there was none.

"Well, where are you going?" She asked, fingers trailing up a green vine. Jeremy had returned to his purple plant, attempting to resurrect it, though Jean knew that was a futile effort. What Jean killed did not come back to life, not unless there was a deal to be made.

"Downtown," said Jean.

"Maybe we'll come with," said Jeremy.

A frown tugged at the edges of Jean's mouth. "I don't--"

But Jeremy was now nudging Alvarez. "C'mon Al, it's been so long since we went to a party."

Jean met her eyes, just before he turned to leave. What party? The Underworld was the exact opposite of a party. He didn't know what Jeremy was after but he had no intention of bringing them both down to the darkest part of his world.

They'd been before. It ended badly.

The last time Jeremy showed up there, Riko had immediately known somehow, perhaps through Kevin. In the old words, Riko was Zeus, and Kevin Poseidon.

Riko was there tonight.

A long time ago, part of the world had split, like a tear in the seam of a blanket, and the old Gods had come through. They'd built and shaped the world into what it was now. They created the seasons, they created rifts in the Earth now famous, now seas, and they’d created the idea of sin and the glory of redemption.

If Jeremy went tonight, it could only end in pain for both of them. Having Jeremy that close, to see him in the Underworld, it was always too easy to picture him having a place there forever.

Which meant spring would never come. 

Jean moved past Alvarez like a shadow, as she stepped forward to convince Jeremy not to leave his apartment.

 

* * *

  

Jean took the train.

It was rickety and moved too much. The seats were coming apart, old red plastic dirty where he sat, at the end of the carriage where it was less likely that he'd be seen or interacted with. There was only a homeless man sitting across from him, who woke with a start.

They didn't say anything to each other. The old man looked up to the part of the train that was better lit. Down here, a swarm of black bugs had coated the lights above their head, sitting on the dirty plastic like it wasn't burning them. The buzzing noise they made was almost louder than the sound of metal traveling over tracks.

They might have made a sight, him and Jean. One young as anything, and wearing clothes with a sleek finish, seams sewn with silver and red thread. He wore no embellishments, besides thick silver fashion rings. The other, with clothes that might have been gray once, and flannel so worn through Jean could make out the band t-shirt falling apart underneath it. He had string and old food in his matted beard.

The buzzing was so loud.

If there were other people on the train, neither the homeless man nor Jean could hear them. Jean studied his hands.

The train stopped three times, before its last. Jean got off at the end, and after a minute, the homeless man followed him. It wasn't his usual job but he let the homeless man follow his footsteps, heels clicking hard against the pavement.

Jean liked to leave the club every once in a while, if only to see the rainbow reflection of oily water on the street pavement. He strode past the best of the worst buildings; the ones that were at the edge of business, days from closing, or catching fire or being robbed. Graffiti tagged every open space, each message more threatening than the last.

He passed the worst of worst buildings, where not even the homeless would sleep, despite the empty space. The building he stopped at, an old train stop, the wall had crumbled so much that he could see the insides, unnatural, like looking inside a chest cavern broken in by violence. Jean could just make out the edges of the staircase in the dark. It was falling apart, and if there was a second floor, it was no longer accessible, nothing left of the stairs save for empty air and loose piping and cement.

It should have been more dangerous at night, in this part of town, but it was less so. Nighttime was when the mortals, even the goon ones, slept.

Jean entered a tunnel where the old train used to run before they'd shut down this stop some fifty years before. Hints of the garish paint job could still be seen decorating the ticket booth. Rats scurried past.

He wandered past the old ticket booths, following the faded signs to the stairwell. The homeless man trailed behind him, though distantly, like he was trying to keep Jean from noticing he had a follower. Or maybe trying to get himself to stop following. Jean wished him the best, and hoped he'd succeed.

The discolored brick was darker, dirtier in the pit in the floor where the subway train used to stop and pick up passengers.

Jean jumped from the platform onto the tracks and followed to the end, hands shoved in his pockets. He followed the tracks until he saw a grimy door that should have been chained off but wasn't, a rusted "employees only" sign slung across the door and underneath that, the words _Eden’s Twilight_ in fading gray.

It took a moment of manhandling to work the door handle open. It creaked with old rust as he forced it, throwing all his weight on his shoulder then shoving.

It gave way.

The explosion of flashing lights and sound almost knocked Jean back into the tunnel; with an EDM beat so powerful he could feel it rocking the core of him. His boots shook with it. His fingertips shook with it. His teeth, his hair --

The Underworld was a club, pulsating and alive with souls recently departed.

The quickest way to move through the crowd was to dance, or shove. Jean opted for the second option, not thinking too hard about the glazed over eyes and the too-cool skin in the stuffy air. He pushed past the bodies. More than one noticed his presence and reached out to him, their fingernails long, skin paler than a dancing body should've been. To anyone else, it was freaky, but Jean was used to the undead, and comfortable around them. It made it easier to pick out the live ones who wandered into the club.

It wasn't an easy thing to do, to wander in. You had to die to get here. Or follow the souls of the dead who, when they'd passed, made their way to the club with sluggish movements, as if not noticing their own body's failings. Much like how the brain distracts itself from hunger when there's an appointment to keep or a task to get done, when a soul passed on, it got up, and started walking along the night streets, regardless of whether the body followed. Regardless of where the body was left.

Jean felt a presence nearby, something shadowy and old and powerful. It made the hair at the ends of his arms stand up on end and his nose flared at the smell of salt.

“You’re kidding yourself if you think that he won’t notice how long you’ve been gone,” said a voice from behind him.

“Is he here?” asked Jean.

“Yes. I don’t know where,” said Kevin, motioning around the club. His forehead was glistening with sweat, and he had a shot glass in each hand, both empty.

It wasn’t unusual to see Kevin Day here.

Kevin had very little interest in dancing, but much interest in his brother. He was the second oldest, next to Riko, and he took that responsibility with a seriousness that made every second out of his sight an absolute pleasure.

Jean scanned the dancing floor, then looked back at Kevin. He stole the shot glasses from Kevin’s fingertips, and then returned to sweep the masses, looking for a dark head of hair among the pale bodies.

Riko was somewhere in the area. It was hard to say where - The place was built like an underground club, with two levels. A dip in the center floor, where everyone danced, split down the middle by a long flat bar without chairs.

Two girls and a boy danced on top of the bar. They wore bits of costume to echo hints of the lives they led, shift dresses made of fur and bone. They moved like three parts of one animal. Their dancing was promiscuous, intimate with the patrons without touching them, but they stood at the highest point in the club. It was their job to watch over it, to keep an eye out for unfriendly intruders.

Eden's Twilight was international. The sign, lit up in neon white outside the club, was in English but language spoken inside was garbled, and the signs that listed prices and drink were gibberish or Greek. It was lines, connected by what might have been cuts in the UV chalkboard, and it was illegible, completely.

The homeless man that had followed Jean here was still behind him, and Jean threw a look over his shoulder to see what he was doing with himself.

In retrospect, he should have expected the addition. Bright yellow hair and an excited smile.

"Jean!" yelled Jeremy across the room.

A puppy. He was a puppy. An idiotic, too happy--

He ambled over to Jean, twirling like he was made to dance, moving quicker than Jean had through the masses. Alvarez was just behind him, clearly not having as easy a time pushing and shoving dead people out of the way.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" she was gasping. "It _smells_. I can't even _breathe_ in here. Why is their skin so clammy--"

Jean stumbled back. If Riko heard about this, if Riko saw them - he would be merciful. It was a different kind of mercy than the regular definition but it was certainly a kind of mercy to let them leave at all and right now that was all Jean could hope for.

Kevin didn't seem to agree with Jean's conclusion. He wordlessly moved past Jean, to stand in front of Jeremy and offer a hand.

Jeremy clasped his hand and pulled him into an embrace, with a lot of back clapping and "Kevin, you old fool, how have you been?" And smiling. Always smiling.

Jean tried not to be annoyed with Kevin for the dopey grin he was sporting after.

"Persephone--"

"Uh," interrupted Jeremy, "I don't go by that name anymore, Kevin."

A lot of Gods used alias now, but it’d been a long time since Jeremy used a feminine one. Kevin nodded but the hard glint Jean was most familiar with was back in his eyes. "Jeremy, man, you can't be here."

Jeremy grinned sheepishly. "Alvarez wanted to come."

"Alvarez?"

"Right, it’s been a while. Demeter."

Alvarez might have offered a smile in greeting, or more likely, a hard punch to the arm and a firm handshake, but her eyes had begun to glaze over. There was a beat in the air but not music. It wasn't sound, but it was audible. A breath in the form of a beat, it was an intoxicating stream of wordless euphoric rhythm that enchanted and drew dead souls here. It was easy to fall victim to the sharp, face paced lullaby that everyone was dancing to.

Dancing like this was fun, but it was hard to stop once you'd begun. It wasn't for the faint of heart and Alvarez seemed to have fallen victim to it. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her eyes fluttering shut. Jeremy gave her a little nudge and she stirred again, head dipping and bobbing. Someone - a lost soul - reached out to her, and without her permission, her fingers brushed against theirs.

Once they'd started reaching for her, it was like they all knew to reach for her.

Alvarez wanted to let them; Jean could see it in the way she stilled suddenly, eyes blinking hard, body coiling inwards. Fighting it.

Jean and Kevin exchanged a look.

 _They're not stayin_ g, said Jean's.

 _Well, they're already here,_ said Kevin's.

Jean gritted his teeth.

"Leave," said Kevin, looking from Alvarez to Jeremy.

"No," said Jeremy.

Kevin shrugged.

Hands, pale and veiny, grabbed the back of Jeremy's shirt as if to haul him out himself, but Kevin grabbed Jeremy's shoulder and pulled him forward, away from Jean. Jean seethed as Kevin said, "One drink then."

Before Jean stop him, Kevin was striding through the crowd. Unlike Jean or Alvarez, the crowd parted for Kevin, recognizing his power as something they could never touch. They had long lost that formality with Jean. It was a secret Jean only tried half hard to keep - he was just as scared of them as they were of him and they knew it. That gave them power.

The center bar was full and the three dancing atop it paused to look down at Kevin. Cerberus _loved_ Kevin. Nobody really liked Kevin, his bossy attitude and rude standards frankly made him unpleasant to be around. But he was always nice to Cerberus and they relished in the attention.

"Kevin," they said, in varying degrees of pining, dropping to the floor of the bar, one girl drifting down like a feather to stretch out on the grimy bar, letting a slim leg dangle off the edge. The old, sticky state of the bar didn't seem to bother her and she reached out as if to trail a finger up Kevin's arm. Kevin stepped out of the way. The other two blew Kevin kisses but kept moving.

Jean was shaking his head. "They don't even like _me_ that much," he murmured to Alvarez, who wasn't listening, her eyes still a little glazed.

Without warning, she slipped out of sight, letting the unknown dead twine their fingers with hers, and pull her into the crowd. Jean didn’t even notice, still muttering, “They’re supposed to be _guarding_ –“ and he probably wouldn’t have missed her, had Jeremy not followed her in.

Jean scowled, and though it was not directed at Kevin, he definitely had Kevin in mind.

Alvarez had lifted her arms above her head, hands clasped with those of the dead, who pulled her along like they knew exactly where to put her. She was passed like a rag doll from hand to hand, smiling with her eyes closed, and Jean almost wouldn’t have been able to find her, if not for Jeremy who shouted her name, reaching out to grab her shoulder.

He was shoved back by the dead. Whereas he’d been so fluently dancing before, Jeremy had weakened in the time he’d been here – too long already. His skin was pale and sickly, like all the sunshine had been sucked out of him through a straw. He made another grab for Alvarez, and then fell.

Jean’s wrath fought his fear of the rapidly swelling sea of people. The rage won out, and he pushed forward until he got to Jeremy, pulling him up by the arm.

Jeremy was stuttering badly, his words and sentences ending in gasps. Jean brushed a sweaty lock of hair from Jeremy’s forehead. If he stayed any longer he’d be stuck here forever. The Underworld was not made for the living, and those who slipped in did not stay alive long.

Jean scanned the crowd for Alvarez. The souls were dragging her to a place all souls feared after death, a place all souls thought they were condemned to, a place for the banished.

Tartarus – a piece of the Underworld as far from Jean as heaven was to the Earth. It was a place meant for criminals, for monsters, for rivals punished by the Gods. Not for Alvarez. It exists on the edges of the dance floor, dark swirls of void swallowing anything that came near.

Jean reached out, and pulled her from their grasp with a practiced ease, and she fell against Jeremy, gasping.              

Jean held tight to them both as he pushed through the swirling mass of people. The crowd was impossible to navigate but as long as the center bar was in sight they could make it out. They, referring to Alvarez and Jeremy. Jean himself could stand perfectly still at the center of the dance floor for hours and not feel any of the repercussions but if any of the Gods did that, even Kevin, there was a very good chance they’d never find their way out again, not without Jean.

Kevin was waiting at the bar when they got out.

“Fuck,” Jean gasped, “You could have _helped_ —”

Kevin shrugged, watching Jean shoving Alvarez none too gently in front of him despite her struggling to get back into the dancing crowd. Jeremy was faring a little better, holding tight to Jean’s sleeve and keeping his eyes pressed firmly shut. He stepped where Jean stepped, following so close Jean could feel his breath on the back of his neck.

“You make it hard on yourself. He just wanted to dance,” said Kevin, freshly made drinks in front of him. Jean resisted the urge to glare.

“What are those?” Jeremy asked, peering out from behind Jean when he heard Kevin’s voice.

Kevin brightened. “Have one.”

There were five drinks resting next to Kevin’s elbow: two shots of something dark and amber – presumably for Kevin – a glass of wine and two pomegranate bellinis. The champagne bubbles floated and fizzed at the top like it’d just been poured, reddened by the pomegranate juice and the six seeds at the bottom of each glass.

Jeremy picked one up, inspecting it.

Jean took it from him. “Don’t.”

If Jean were a good person, he would have actually wanted to stop Jeremy from drinking, but part of him was curious as to what Jeremy would do with it.

Jean pushed the drinks back towards Cerberus, who were looking on with disappointed faces.

“You all know that won’t work,” he said, giving Kevin in particular a hard look. Six seeds for six months; it was a story, and arbitrary besides.

Stories got diluted over time. The people who told the stories of the Greek Gods got the longing right – the way Jean had fallen hard and fast – and made every attempt at being with Jeremy.

People liked happy endings. Not even that – people liked _fair_ endings. They liked to know that if one tries hard enough, or loves fiercely enough, it’s possible to have everything you could ever want. Nobody wants to read about how sometimes hard work isn’t enough. Sometimes love isn’t enough.

They’d tried the pomegranate seeds.

Six seeds, for six months a year, with the hopes that Jeremy would be able to survive in the Underworld, were given to a young gods, who one by one went crazy or died.

Until Seth. Seth had similar build and reputation to Jeremy’s – the ability to create life. He lasted over five months.

His ability hadn’t counted for much in the end. The god ate the seeds, and then melted into the crowd, dancing with the souls of the dead. For a moment, everything was perfect. Then, Seth got moody, swinging from manic-depressive to deliriously happy over the course of an hour. His heart beat hard, hidden away in his ribcage, but the blood didn’t rise, his skin a sickly white parlor.

Jean found his body months later, in a pool of his own vomit in the middle of the dance floor. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like an overdose, like an ending for someone used to making track marks on his skin, but that wasn’t the case.

As it turns out, if a person – any person, even a God - ate something from the Underworld, or even stayed too long, they would become a part of the Underworld, dancing until someone else came to collect them, and lead them to their final place.

Of course, humans hadn’t written it like that. Hadn’t wanted to remember it like that, because that’s not a fair ending.

But it was the reality.

Kevin knocked back both shots, and pushed the wine at Jean. Jean scoffed at it, too busy cataloging Jeremy’s pale face.

“You have to leave, now,” he told him, shooting Kevin a fierce look. As much as it seemed like Kevin was sabotaging them, Kevin actually liked Jeremy. He didn’t think that he and Jean should be together but as an individual, Kevin made his admiration clear on enough occasions that Jean had wondered more than once if he should be jealous.

“I can stay a little longer,” said Jeremy, but the words were slurred.

“No,” said a new voice. “You can’t.”

Jean didn’t need to see Kevin’s face tighten then go blank or the way that Cerberus scattered suddenly, the three of them finding some place new to dance and prowl, to know it was.

Riko was here.

The king of gods touched Jeremy’s cheek. Alvarez jerked back, but Jeremy was either too tired or too smart for that. He gave Riko a plastic-looking smile, and tilted his head away, in what could have passed for demure if Jean hadn’t seen the hard glint in his eyes.

“You are making a mess of the sound system,” Riko said. His voice was like silk, but it projected, and the lingering, nearby souls stopped dancing, only to fall to the ground, stilled for a time.

Riko pushed the bodies aside with one foot, and looked past Jean to the giant speaker system at the corners of the club. Now that Jean was paying attention, he noticed the stutter, the way sound seemed a little muffled. He squinted as he looked up, noticing the green tendrils of plant life pushing through of the mesh of the speaker box. Roses, red as wine, bloomed proudly from the speakers, though the petals that fell seemed to wilt as they hit the floor.

Jean and Kevin both winced.

It was wrong for life to flourish here, in a place made specifically for its absence.

Jean looked at Jeremy, who gave him a weak smile. Jean wanted to take his hand.

But not with Riko standing in front of them.

“We’ll go –” Alvarez heaved out, like the words were in the pit of her stomach and she had to force them up.

Riko gave a short nod.

Unlike Kevin, he had no love for Jeremy or Alvarez. They were vital to the world but they did their jobs well enough that they never had to interact with him. The only reason Riko knew of their existence at all was because of Jean. The more Jean hung around them, the angrier Riko got about it. The quicker he seemed to show up whenever Jean and Jeremy were together.

“I’ll remove them,” said Jean, at his best impression of cool detachment. Without waiting for a signal from Riko, he ushered the two sunshine pals towards the exit, confident they’d be able to find their way home if only they left the club.

Jean heard Riko say something to Kevin, but it was so quiet, he couldn’t make it out. Kevin replied, his eyes on the floor. Jean looked away just as Riko was picking up his abandoned wine glass and taking a sip.

“Go, go, go,” chanted Jean through his teeth, as he slipped through the crowd with Jeremy and Alvarez, trying to rush their sluggish movements.

“Jean, we –” started Jeremy.

“Quiet. You shouldn’t have come.”

“I had fun,” said Jeremy, sloppily avoiding a dancing soul. “Alvarez, didn’t you have fun?”

Alvarez glared at him, and opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by her own throat constricting. She made a noise like she was going to puke, and Jean picked up the pace, door to the natural world in sight.

“We should do this again some time,” Jeremy told him and Jean could hear the smile in his voice.

He made sure Jeremy could see how hard he rolled his eyes as they finally, _finally_ reached the door.

Alvarez grabbed the handle and shook it, hard. Nothing happened until Jean braced his shoulder against the door, and gave it a firm push. It creaked open, just a little, just enough for Jeremy and Alvarez to squeeze themselves out.

Jeremy caught Jean’s arm, and Jean felt summer-like warmth where they touched. It wasn’t unpleasant.

“Meet me somewhere,” said Jeremy, as Alvarez tugged on his arm. “Meet me somewhere nicer than here.”

Jean scoffed. “No.”

Jeremy pulled forward out of Alvarez’s grip and Jean felt himself smile as the brush of Jeremy’s lips against his ear as Jeremy whispered an address.

“Jeremy, we’re going,” Alvarez’s voice raised to a shriek. “Now!”

“Meet me there,” said Jeremy, again, before the heavy metal door between them slammed shut.

Jean rested his forehead on the cool metal, and breathed in the scent of wind and wet leaves still lingering in the air. With his eyes closed, he could pretend for a moment that his next few steps were right behind Jeremy’s, like the heat on his face was sunlight though it wasn’t the sun or the outdoors he wanted. He gave himself the barebones of five seconds, then straightened his spine and went to the center bar.

Kevin and Riko weren’t speaking when he got there, though he understood from the white-knuckle grip Kevin on his glass that the conversation hadn’t been silent long.

Jean walked as slowly as he could, purposefully drawing out the time it would take to reach them, and their subsequent questions.

Riko’s black hair looked blue against the light. It softened him, like a Polaroid snapshot, a rare, benevolent look -- until he turned to meet Jean’s gaze and the harsh strobe light tore across his face, villainous in way that was rarely so black and white in the real world. Jean ignored the shudder that crept across his shoulders and down his spine. Riko’s face was blank, expression lack of humanity.

Jean rested both elbows on the bar, sitting close enough to Kevin to feel the heat of his arm through his sleeves. It was a reassuring pressure. It was good Jeremy got out when he did; Jeremy’s predilection for conversation would be his downfall here.

Riko’s hand trailed across the bar, fingertips picking up dirt and dust and the stick of spilled drinks. He made a disgusted face, and then made to wipe his hand on the sleeve of Jean’s jacket.

“Really, Jean. Where would you even live?” said Riko.

Jean clenched his jaw, eyes on the floor. Everywhere, thought Jean. No where. Wherever we’d want.

He didn’t dare say this out loud, but it must’ve been written on his face because Riko took one look at him and let out a frustrated exhale through his nose, like he was sick of explaining this already. It was a conversation that had been going on for centuries.

“Realistically,” Riko said. He stopped suddenly, like his thought was open ended and he expected Jean to fill the gap with ‘it’s not realistic. A future with him – springtime and death just don’t go together’.

Jean didn’t want to say it. So he didn’t.

“Jeremy can’t live in the Underworld,” Kevin looked at his shoes as he spoke, knowing that eye contact might provoke Riko, and to provoke Riko on the subject of such a delicate matter was unwise. Riko might not like Jeremy but he wouldn’t hurt him, not when doing so would inflict a chain of wrath, starting with Alvarez, and every other God of the living world; Jeremy was quite well liked.

Riko would only do it if he could get away with it, which reassured Jean somewhat, but in the same vein, nothing could be taken for granted. Zeus’s actions weren’t always rational.

“Persephone can’t live here,” confirmed Riko, without taking his eyes off Jean. Jean bit his tongue to keep from correcting the name. “And you can’t live away from the Underworld. You rule this place; without you, the souls of the dead have nowhere to go.”

Jean said nothing.

Riko cast a glance around the club, eyes lingering on Cerberus, lip curled in disgust. “I miss the hellhounds. What happened to just regular, fire and brimstone animals patrolling, scaring off the live ones? Eating those not scared enough? That was nice.”

He motioned to Cerberus, curling his hand in the air like he was their owner. They exchanged looks, before training their weary gaze on Jean.

“Cerberus!” Riko barked, and they slinked over. Riko pointed at the bar and they started mixing drinks, keeping their eyes down. They’d been in human form long enough to know that to so much as irk Riko was to inflict centuries long ire.

When the drink was made, they placed it in front of Riko on a thin napkin, before staring at Jean, begging without words to be allowed to go.

“Well, there’s one way,” said Riko, finger tracing the rim of his glass. “One way for you to be together.”

Kevin’s head jerked up from the floor and he gave an unusually firm shake of his head.

“No. That’s not happening.”

“I’m not talking to you, Kevin,” said Riko.

Jean’s eyes narrowed. Abruptly, he was sick of this conversation. He wanted desperately to walk away, or at the very least to do something with his hands. He settled for brushing some debris off the bar – old scraps of paper and dirt, before clasping them together in a firm grip and resting them on the bar’s surface.

“What?” said Jean, flatly, knowing the answer.

“If Persephone –” Riko cleared his throat with a mean smile, “— _Jeremy_ — eats anything from the Underworld, you know he can’t go back upstairs. Ever.”

And spring would end prematurely, never to return. Perpetual, Narnia-like winter would settle over the earth like a blanket of dread. Alvarez would never see her friend again. Jeremy would never see sunlight again. And that was a world Jean never wanted to imagine.

Riko seemed to be waiting for a response, his smile a little too thin.

“I know,” Jean huffed, finally turning back to face Riko. “That’s why I’ll never let him.”

Even Kevin narrowed his eyes at that. Riko sighed, like this old argument had gone on too long already, and he was ready to leave it.

“Why?” he said, pushing one finger up against the rim of his glass until it began to tilt. “Because you know he’d do it? How immoral of you. Taking away an option Jeremy doesn’t even know he has. It’s a little evil, even for you.”

“I’m Hades. If it’s evil, that’s just who I am,” returned Jean, eying the glass Riko was on the cusp of pushing over, its liquid contents centimeters from spilling.

Riko hummed in approval. “Oh Jean. How I wish that were the case. But really, you want to keep him from here – why?” Riko’s eyes bored into him. “Maybe it’s because you want it too bad. Maybe you know if he had the choice, he wouldn’t pick you. He’d have to leave everything, after all. He’d have to leave life.”

Jean stared at hard at Riko’s drink.

Riko smirked and flicked it with his index finger. It fell with a noiseless clatter, the spill of alcohol fake-like in the way it made no sound as it rolled near to the edge of the bar. The liquid inside – whiskey, Jean could smell it now – looked amber in the glass, but against the black countertop, the liquid was dark as it slowly spread.

“Humans are so funny. They get these things so wrong,” Riko said. “There is no halfway. There is no six pomegranate seeds. There is only _here_ , and _there_ , and we both know how well visiting hours work.”

Jean caught Kevin’s eye, to see a strange apology staring back at him, before Kevin’s gaze was averted.

Jean smiled coldly. He didn’t bother with a reply; it would just egg Riko on. He pushed away from bar and strode through the dancing crowd without a goodbye.

Riko called something after him followed by a heckling laugh.

Jean felt something soft touch his wrist, and glanced back to see Cerberus following him diligently, the three of them moving fluidly through the crowd in a way Jean had never truly mastered. He felt a sudden rush of affection for them, as they stepped on his heels almost all the way to the door.

“Keep an eye on things,” he said to them, hesitating with one hand on the door. “But stay out of his way, as much as you can.”

 

* * *

 

Miles away, one could hear the trumpet. A sound punched into the air, bright and ostentatious as the color yellow. It danced through the columns holding up Louisiana residential homes, mansions from the 1800s wearing whites and blues as if dressed for Easter, or Sunday school.

There was no one in sight, just that music. It was slow, jazzy, and grew in volume but noticeably alone, playing alongside a band out far in the French Quarter. It was only a few minutes before Jean’s feet carried him to where he was struck vividly by a photograph of a person waiting, colors dulled by time or by the night, his mouth pressed hard to a trumpet, eyes closed as he played. Jean watched him for a moment, time that he took to suck in a deep breath.

The trumpet cut off as Jeremy noticed him. He lowered it, and shot Jean a toothy grin.

“Hey,” said Jeremy, tucking the trumpet into a small black case. “Have you ever been to Bourbon Street?”

Bourbon Street was an old neighborhood, but you never would have thought so with how the buildings lit up neon, beads thrown from balconies onto a loud crowd of wanderers looking for the dark kind of adventure New Orleans was infamous for.

Jeremy hurried down the street, Jean hardly stepping out of his shadow. They stopped only for brightly dressed women and men who draped cheap, metallic, sunset-bright beads around their necks, and Jean felt the weight of it was somehow heavier than plastic.

Daylight crept away, drenching everything in blue-gold, lengthening shadows that seemed to dance with the swing music.

The parade of people thickened as they hurried closer to the center of Bourbon Street. Jeremy pulled Jean out of the way of a flying skirt, the ruffle of which brushed the tip of Jean’s nose as the wearer threw her partner around in time with the fast-paced trombone. The material frayed where it came in contact with Jean, but it whipped out of sight before either dancer noticed.

The street was more like a party than a parade - no person in the same space for more than a few seconds, everybody wearing and exchanging costume jewelry and colorful tokens.

One swing dancer hoisted the other into the air, bodies moving around each other like birds do in the sky. He picked her up by the hips with no effort at all, and her legs kicked open air like an echo of a fight until he twirled her back around, where she landed on her feet with a flourish and then spun him back.

Jean immediately turned to Jeremy, who had somehow acquired an enormous purple and gold jester’s hat, and then looked back at the dancers, then Jeremy again (to inquire about the hat), but whatever he was about to say was lost on his lips as Jeremy pulled him close before spinning him away.

“I can’t dance,” said Jean, firmly.

“You run a nightclub,” replied Jeremy.

A woman twirled out of her partner’s arms and Jeremy caught her, immediately picking up where the dancer left off. Jeremy, in his ridiculous oversized hat and Mardi Gras beads, danced with no clear direction, though it might have been obvious only to Jean that he had no idea what he was doing.

“This is ridiculous,” said Jean, but the music got louder before the words reached Jeremy’s ears. Jean shouted them again.

Jeremy ignored him, more obviously this time, holding both the woman’s hands and spinning in a wide circle. Laughter rang out as he let go and she fell against Jean, who held her up with a scowl.

As the god of death, he brought rot and blood upon those he interacted with, but it was only small animals and plants that succumbed to his touch. A human might feel nauseous after contact with him, or notice their limbs aching for no good reason but these were small grievances.

He tried to steer the woman away with a hand on her waist, but she took him for a dancer, and spun him around with a surprisingly strong grip. Jean reddened as he gave in and twirled her back.

He caught Jeremy’s eyes. Jeremy grinned at him, easy and infectious.

Jean shook his head, but a smile was fighting a losing battle at the corner of his mouth.

The music came to a pause, and a boisterous resulting cry rose up from the masses. Jeremy turned Jean with a hand on his shoulder and pointed to a live band, playing atop a passing float. The leading musician acknowledged them all with one hand, and then took a moment for the crowd to settle - which they didn’t, too wound up with shared energy.

He slammed both hands down on the keyboard and sound rang out.

The crowd stilled.

A gentle note. Another, two octaves down. Then, more. His hands moved across the keyboard in an intricate dance of light and hard notes, before the drummer joined in, and then the trombone, each trying to make their own impression, three soloists in a single measure working together.

Someone near Jean let out a loud whistle and a few people around her hollered. Jeremy cupped both hands around his mouth and joined in.

Jean looked around. On one side of them, a group of children danced in a small ring-around-the-rosie circle, hands linked together. On their other side, a man tripped drunkenly into a group of people and then the set was surging like a wave to push him onto his feet. It was chaos but a good chaos.

Jean backed out of the way of two men with a girl between them, obviously in dispute of whom she was choosing to dance with. The push and pull of the crowd made it hard to stay in one place, and people themselves were nevertheless overwhelming so his feet took him to where there were fewer bodies. He lost sight of Jeremy in doing so, and found himself leaning against a column by a storefront.

It was a strange looking store. Its shutters were bright green, the paneling red and yellow. A sign hung in front of the door, in a kitschy font that made the words ‘VooDoo Shop’ nevertheless a little more ominous. Inside was dark, but Jean could still see expressionless dolls lined up in front of the window.

He looked away. The neighboring store was just a dark door, words scribbled in yellow across the wood. A red and white sign was hung by small chains in front of the door, decorated with an eye, drawn simplistically as if by a child’s crayon, advertising _Les Parques_ , and in small writing underneath the eye, _Psychic Readings_. The Fates. Jean wondered if he should be worried.

People came to New Orleans for the mystery of it, spurred on by the second-hand tales of horror that lurked just behind closed doors. It wasn’t bullshit. Well, some of it was bullshit. But the dead _did_ walk the streets - not that people had anyway of knowing who was and who wasn’t. Everyone was drinking, and everyone was dancing, and it brought color to their faces. Those without color under their skin painted it on, with the festive Mardi Gras purple and greens.

Jean’s eyes couldn’t help but stray to the dark corners lit up on the sides of the streets. Daytime was dying a cobalt death but the booths stood out like sore thumbs -- proclaiming supernatural abilities, the cost of your future hung up on a towel-like banner. Those who wanted to see their futures told would have to wait until morning, as only the sketchiest places remained open for the night.

Suddenly, he felt more than saw someone step up in front of him and turned his head to see Jeremy, whose white shirt was plastered to his chest. Jean’s nose wrinkled.

“You smell like rum,” he said.

Jeremy laughed. “Got a drink dumped on me.”

Jean sniffed again. The alcohol made his eyes water. “Just one?”

“Uh. Well. Once one person started, everybody else kind of joined in.”

Jean gave him a flat look. “What did you do?”

“I honestly don’t know,” said Jeremy, “Might’ve had something to do with who I was dancing with?”

“Who were you dancing with?”

Jeremy squinted at the VooDoo sign. “A girl?”

Jean shook his head, and looked back at the crowd. The parade showed no signs of winding down, and despite the cheering, the swell of music, and the trumpets from the band, laughter was still the loudest sound in the air.

Jeremy lifted the collar of his shirt to his nose and then winced. “It really is bad, huh?”

He turned his head back again to face Jeremy, and realized how close he was; they were very nearly the same height, sparing Jeremy a few inches.

Jean’s eyes travelled down the length of his soaked front, abs were clearly visible through the thin fabric. Of course. Of course they were. When he looked back up again, Jeremy was smirking.

“Yes,” Jean said. “It’s bad.”

“I could take it off,” Jeremy suggested.

Jean tilted his head back to rest against the column. This boy would kill him.

Jeremy tugged him in by his Mardi Gras beads. If Jean had any brains left at all, he’d step away. The last dregs of daytime had slipped away without Jean noticing, and in the night, the festival colors seemed all the more intense. All the sounds around them, a little more distant. There was no noise; just the sharp sound of Jeremy’s inhale. He thought for a moment Jeremy might say his name - and desperately, Jean wanted him to say his name.

He exhaled, shakily, and looked up at the sky so he wouldn’t have to look at Jeremy. The temptation of Jeremy was less when he wasn’t looking at his face.

Thanks to the abundance of city light, there were hardly any stars out. It felt like privacy, like the gods they were named for might not be able to see Jean’s struggle from the sky. It should have been reassuring, it but only heightened the lure.

Jeremy followed his gaze.

“Air pollution,” he said, like someone might say the name of a dead loved one, or a confess some unspeakable guilt. “One day we’ll look up and there won’t be any stars.”

“People are blind,” Jean agreed.

“They really are.”

“They only think of themselves.”

Jeremy paused. “Well. They used to think of us. They thought of us when they looked up at night.”

Jean scoffed. “And prayed that they’d never meet us.”

He could feel more than see Jeremy look at him again. Then, a pressure against his collarbone, not so much a kiss as the press of lips against skin. It was chaste as anything and still sent shivers all the way down his spine.

“They,” said Jeremy, “named constellations after our pets, our sons and daughters, our ships -- they named us and remembered us. Doesn’t that make you feel a little less lonely?”

“Not really,” said Jean, looking Jeremy in the eye. He didn’t know what he was doing. His brothers weren’t stars and neither was he.

Jeremy didn’t drop his gaze. Reds from flares and blinking yellow lights draped down telephone poles created a halo of gold around Jeremy’s head. Neither of them said anything, and the silence held its own like a third presence, thrilling them with its unpredictable next moment. Jean’s eyes darted down.

Jeremy leaned in.

Jean closed his eyes for a second, and imagined letting him. “Don’t.”

Jeremy paused; Jean could feel the heat of his lips right at the corner of his mouth.

“Jeremy,” he said and his name tasted sweet and forbidden as liquor in his mouth. “You make my life difficult.”

There was a moment where neither of them moved, a moment of indecision, of rule-breaking, of what-if.

Then Jeremy pulled away, and Jean felt no relief, only the heart aching loss of heat.

 

* * *

 

The club was the same as Jean left it - an organized kind of destruction visible only to those in charge. It smelled like sweat and heat and too many bodies crammed in one place. Jean found himself sliding back into his role with scary ease -- the mask of porcelain nonchalance felt familiar and cozy. He slipped through the throng of dancers with the usual amount of difficulty - souls fell onto him, clinging, and he pushed them off, eyes firmly on the center bar.

The center bar was easiest place to be in the club; most of the patrons didn’t stop dancing long enough to have a drink so it was where Jean conducted most of the business he had with other Gods.

He dropped into a barstool and signaled Cerberus, taking pleased note of how clean the countertop was today - no dirt, or loose paper or stick from old alcohol. The barstools were lined up, perfect in a row, instead of the haphazard way they were usually shoved back. His brow furrowed. He didn’t remember leaving Eden’s in such fine order, nor asking Cerberus to clean.

Had Cerberus ever cleaned?

Apprehension settled like a stone in his gut, coiling tightly in wait. Someone settled next to him, closer than a stranger might.

“We missed you, yesterday; there was quite a commotion here last night. I think you would’ve enjoyed it but Kevin, he. He had to leave.”

Jean glanced over; Riko was sitting half on his stool, facing the crowd instead of the bar. Jean followed his gaze and saw him staring at a woman. Jean squinted. She looked vaguely familiar.

“How was Mardi Gras?” asked Riko softly.

Jean’s eyes darted back to Riko, his body still. It didn’t matter that Riko knew where he was. They were brothers. Riko didn’t control him. But Jean couldn’t force himself to relax.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jean saw Cerberus dancing on the edge of the center bar, some ways away. He hoped the three of them would stay put. As far as guards went, Cerberus was enough to frighten humans away but hopelessly ineffective against other gods.

“Colorful,” said Jean, looking out at the dark mass of dancers. “Quite fun. I look forward to going again.”

Riko sent him a sharp look. “Do you think that’s in your best interests?”

Jean considered nodding and letting the subject drop. He considered it to the point where when he opened his mouth, he was shocked to hear, “Where my interests lie have nothing to do with you.”

Riko was silent.

For a moment, all there was the den of dancing and white noise that could’ve been hip-hop or someone mowing a lawn. Jean waited patiently for the rebuttal; it would come, and if he knew Riko, it might get violent. He wondered where Kevin was, and when he was coming back.

Riko’s face was stone cold.

Jean continued, “I’m a god as much as you.”

“A god as much as me,” repeated Riko, affecting a look of cool surprise. “A god as much as me?”

Without warning, his fingers twisted around the collar of Jean’s shirt, tight enough Jean felt the fabric cut into the back of his neck, and threw him off his barstool and onto the ground. Jean’s chest felt tight, pressed against the dirty floor, the pressure of Riko’s foot firm against his back.

Something gritty smeared against Jean’s cheek as he turned his head to prevent his face from being crushed, and came eye to eye with a lifeless body.

There were no two things more different than a dancing body and a dead one. The lack of blood flow had turned her into a black and white portrait, with waxy parlor and gray cataract eyes that made the dead thing seem more like a doll than a person. Blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth, and she was so close to Jean he could feel the creepy emptiness, where he should have felt body heat, and didn’t.

It was new dead. Hours, not days.

She was familiar, somehow, and he realized she was the dancing woman he’d bumped into when he first walked into the club.

No. Wait. That wasn’t it.

“I am the king of gods,” Riko hissed, and Jean struggled to get a glimpse of his face out of the corner of his eyes. There was a glint of pleasure in his expression, mismatched with the fury, like he was eagerly waiting for Jean’s response and Jean dropped his gaze, knowing that any rebuttal Riko would only enjoy.

He looked at the woman again, eyes trailing down her body. Her arms were twisted in a gruesome, broken way at the elbows, hands the wrong side up next to her face. A glance down showed Jean that her legs were the same, broken backwards at the knees.

It was the woman he and Jeremy had danced with last night.

Jean swallowed, hard.

“Your business is with the dead, not the living,” Riko said. “I hate that I have to remind you of that. You belong down here. You belong to me.”

He held Jean down just a moment longer, and then the pressure on Jean’s back was gone, and Riko pulled him to his feet. He brushed dust and grime from Jean’s shirt, before pulling him down onto a barstool.

Riko sat back, and looked out into the crowd. This time, Jean could see that he wasn’t looking out at the dancing souls at all, but at the woman’s body, watching it trampled underneath the feet of dancers. It was insult to injury, the lack of respect for the dead.

Riko had never brought death here before. Banished people here to torture them, sure, but this nightmarish death was to torture Jean. He couldn’t look at her for too long, the staring eyes and sternum flattened by feet was all too reminiscent of another body - Seth, the god he’d given six pomegranate seeds to.

When they’d found him, he’d been on the floor like that, bile pooled around his mouth like a drug addict’s indelicate last high. He hadn’t lasted six months.

Jean wanted to say something but he didn't have the words. His mouth was so dry he tasted iron.  

“Did you kill him?” said Jean. It was less of a question and more of an excuse, depending entirely on Riko’s response.

Jean didn’t clarify who he was talking about. The condition of the body was deliberate, a matter-of-fact shock, neatly positioned to face where Jean sat, the suggestion of which was too overt for Jean not to mention.

Riko stared at him a moment and then shook his head. “Of course I killed him.”       

Jean heard his chair fall back with a clatter, and realized he was standing. His hands were shaking.

He wished he were surprised.

Once, he would have involved the others, gods with less sway than himself but still, there was a reassuring power in numbers. A show of power, even one that produced no satisfying outcome, was still better than doing nothing at all, better than pretending that lack of acknowledgment was any kind of insult.

The body on the ground watched him, waiting.

Riko would kill Jeremy.

It didn't matter who Jeremy was, or who he knew, not if he was dead. Jean thought of Asclepius, whose healing ability that could bring a man back to life was enough of a threat to Zeus’s monopoly of immortality that he killed him with a thunderbolt.

But there were things worse than death, and knowing Riko, he’d consider Jeremy’s demise a personal favor to Jean. Jean thought of Pandora, who Zeus gave both an insatiable curiosity and a box he told her never to open. Her gift unleashed all things evil on humanity. Prometheus, who was chained to a rock, his liver pecked away by an eagle every single day. Eternal agony, because he gave mortals fire a thousand years ago.

Jean sat down.

The corner of Riko’s mouth tilted up, as he sat back, relaxed and rubbed a drop of wine away from the rim of his glass. “Does it change anything?”

Jean’s jaw clenched.

“We should give Jeremy the pomegranate seeds. They worked on Seth,” said Riko. “If I hadn’t killed him, he’d still be here.”

Jean didn’t reply. Had Riko poisoned the seeds before he gave them to Seth? Before he’d given them to everyone? Was that why they hadn’t worked?

No, something didn’t add up. The only thing that ever came out of Riko’s mouth was lies. Every living thing that came in here only came back out if they hadn’t eaten or drank anything.

Jean looked away, gaze locking on the woman’s mangled body, her mouth gaping in terror-filled, still plea for help.

He didn’t know what to believe.

 

* * *

  

Over the next couple of days, Jean found ways to keep himself busy; falling back into routine by keeping an account of everyone who entered Eden’s, keeping special eye on those who were able to leave. The living that snuck in were seen easily by Cerberus, who immediately alerted Jean, who threw them out with all the grace of a disgruntled bouncer.

Kevin didn’t come back.

And neither did Jeremy. He suspected Alvarez was the reason he hadn’t seen Jeremy trying to sneak back in, not after what almost happened to them both. Jean waited a few weeks, careful not to leave the club unless he absolutely had to; he didn’t want to put himself in a place Jeremy had access to.

The idea sent a sharp, aching pain up Jean’s ribcage, but the consequences of Riko finding him here were much more troubling to think about. It was a coward's way out but for now, avoidance would do.

The ache didn't go away. It beat persistently at his insides with each passing day he saw neither his best friend nor the love of his life, worrying him to the point he considered asking Riko. Riko must've known where Kevin was; he never brought up his name, let alone asked why Kevin hadn't shown up in weeks.

It wasn’t until the Chicago apartment fire that Jean learned what happened.

It was winter and someone left clothes to dry on the radiator in an empty apartment. Heavy snowfall meant closed roads and by time the fire department started evacuating people, a hundred lives had been lost.

Jean liked to be there whenever something like this happened. With that many people, he didn’t want to risk anyone getting lost or forgotten on their way to the next world, even though not all of them went to Eden’s. He collected those few who still believed in myth, but more and more he was collecting those who had nowhere else to go.

Kevin was waiting for him there, standing on the sidewalk with a rescue blanket around his shoulders and his usual sour-lemon expression.

“Someone just gave this to me,” was the first thing Kevin said, as he adjusted the blanket.

“I’m sure someone else needs it,” replied Jean. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Where have you been?”

“With friends,” said Kevin, turning to watch firefighters try and tame the burning building.

Jean eyed him, and then said, “Whose friends?”

Kevin scowled.

A small section of the building exploded with a burst of smoke and lick of dark flame. People scurried around them, shouting and covering their faces with their hands to keep out the acid smoke before they were able to shove smoke masks on.

Pachelbel’s Canon rang out. It wasn’t his default ringtone but Kevin liked it, even after four hundred years. Kevin cussed as he fumbled with his phone, and turned it off. Jean wondered if that was the friends he was staying with.

“What’s the matter with your hand?” asked Jean.

It was subtle, but Kevin’s dominant arm was unmoving, hanging from the socket like cement under his sleeve. Kevin’s mouth tightened.

“Nothing,” said Kevin.

“Liar,” said Jean.

Kevin shifted. “You won't benefit from knowing.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Kevin pushed off the blanket and told him. As he spoke, he rolled up his sleeve and revealed a withered right arm, skin shriveled and clinging to bone, the color of dried fruit.

It took Jean too long to understand what Kevin was saying to him. The words came to him as though they were spoken underwater and if not for the visceral proof in front of his eyes, he wouldn't have believed what Kevin said Riko did.

“I don’t understand,” said Jean. “Why --”

Kevin wasn't like Prometheus, or any of the other gods Riko punished over the years. Though Jean knew what Riko’s volatile temper looked like, he’d thought Kevin was above that kind of punishment - too valuable, too powerful.

Just as powerful as Riko, if not moreso. They came from the same blood.

“Did you threaten him?” asked Jean in disbelief. 

Kevin glared at the burning building. “In a manner of speaking.”

_"Why?”_

“Because I’m done with him.”

“You’re a fool,” Jean said lowly. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing you don’t already know,” replied Kevin. “He treats us like his playthings. He breaks us just to watch, and then fixes us and then breaks us again.”

Jean bit his tongue. Kevin’s arm looked bad - really bad. “You should make amends. If you apologize for whatever you did, Riko will lift the curse he’s put on your arm and everything will go back to normal.”

Kevin stared at him flatly, as if trying to decide which part of that statement to tackle first. Finally, he said, “Is that really what you want? Things to go back to the way they were?”

“You don’t understand. The longer you wait, the angrier he’ll get, and the angrier he gets, the more he lashes out. He’ll hurt more than just you and me!”

“ _I_ don’t understand? This isn’t a curse, don’t you get it? What he’s done to my arm, it’s permanent.”

Jean didn’t know when they’d escalated to shouting, but upset people sometimes shouted the truth. He poked the wound. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t pissed him off -”

“ _Me?_ I’m sick of watching you and Jeremy tiptoe around him!”

There it was. Jean clenched his jaw and checked back his anger before he actually said something stupid. He had the pieces, but the puzzle still wasn’t coming together. “What does your arm have to do with Jeremy?”

Kevin didn’t reply. Kevin _liked_ Jeremy though. “Were you trying to help us?”

Kevin looked at him sharply and then turned back to look at the building. “Drop it, Jean.”

Well, it could only be one thing, right?

“The pomegranate seeds…?” guessed Jean. “Riko told me that he killed Seth, so the seeds must’ve actually worked for six months.” His voice changed, excited now. “Maybe they’ll work-”

“They didn’t work,” Kevin interrupted, turning so his green eyes caught Jean’s. “I wanted them to work too, but they didn’t. Seth was getting sicker. He fell into the darkness and couldn’t claw his way out. He went mad. So Riko killed him. That much is true.”

Jean fell silent.

Unbidden, sudden, hot frustration burned at the back of his throat; if Riko had killed Seth in cold blood it would’ve made everything easier. Made the solution black and white. He’d hoped - he’d thought - and then he realized that was Riko’s cruelty: giving him hope when he knew it was fruitless.  

Jean hands were shaking. The anger tasted chalk on his tongue; he thought he might choke on it. He pressed one hand against the side of the building, unsurprised when the heat of it did nothing to blister his skin. He didn’t push; only curled his fist and dug out crumbling brimstone with his nails.

The remainder of the burning building collapsed in a messy haze of rubble and smoke and shouts. Everyone sort of stopped, pausing unhappily to watch.

“The pomegranate seeds are a metaphor. They’re seriously just a metaphor,” said Kevin. He looked down at his burnt hand. “They’re poison, the food there is poison. Everybody we gave them to died. Seth just lasted a little longer.”

“Can you still use it?” asked Jean, following his gaze.

In response, the hand gave a weird, rigor mortis twitch. Kevin sighed through his nose, obviously frustrated. “Not really.”

“What did you try to do?” asked Jean. “Why did Riko destroy your hand?”

Kevin shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. You should leave before he does the same to you.”

Jean snorted.

Kevin eyed Jean wearily. “What are you going to do?”

Jean scratched his nose. “Nothing.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because I’m going actually going to kill him,” said Jean. “And if that doesn’t work out then I’ll throw him in Tartarus with a broken neck.”

Kevin choked. “ _Jean_.”

Jean didn’t reply, just stuffed both hands in the pockets of his dark blazer and stared up at the sky. Ash mingled with snow, the clouds awash with gray.

For a moment they stood in silence. For so long they’d communicated in silent looks and mouthed words, that to speak so much at once was both unusual and deeply comforting. He realized he missed Kevin always being around; it was good to see his friend again.

Which made the realization that Kevin wasn't coming back hurt all the more.

“Where are you staying?” asked Jean.

“Somewhere safe,” replied Kevin.

Probably better that Jean didn't know. He trusted Kevin’s judgment, but for the life of him couldn't think of a place he’d go where Riko couldn't find him.

He wished Kevin luck and stood to watch the dying fire long after Kevin left.

The news shook him. If Riko could do that to Kevin, then he’d have no qualms doing worse to Jean, and there was no telling what he’d do to Jeremy.

 

* * *

 

He went back to the club, but he couldn't keep the resentment off his face. Either luck or happenstance Riko wasn't around today, and Jean didn't know if the ice in his fists was his dreading Riko’s return, or looking forward to it.

The stir crazy tension of being inside Eden’s got to him, and Jean couldn't stomach another second of watching mournful souls push and pull each other with glazed over eyes and translucent limbs. He pushed off his barstool and made his way to the doors, where a small group had coagulated like a blood clot, scratching at the door, wondering why they couldn't leave. He shooed them away, and then slipped out.

Jean loved the city, but especially the city at night. The tourists had gone, the bakeries had closed and the only thing left breathing were cigarettes in the night air. He made like a ghost, walking swift and silent, passing harsh orange lights glowing from corner lampposts and lit-up advisements that were the most life in three miles, including the sluggish just-off-their-shift workers whose feet dragged along the pavement. In nicer parts of the city, some of them bounced, the balls of their feet touching and then lifting off the ground like it was made of coals but not here.

Marseille hadn't changed much in the past hundred years. The subways got cleaner, the graffiti deprecating politics spanning generations. The pier was still packed, and the old greek architecture was well-maintained.

Jean liked the consistency. He liked the iron-and-oil scented air. The heady scent of leaves and soil had no real reason to be here, which is how he knew he wasn't alone.

He felt the hand on his arm a moment before he was pulled into a side street, buildings crammed so closely together it felt more like a closet than an alley. His feet stumbled, clumsy over the cobblestones and Jeremy caught him, pressing him in against the wall.

Jeremy’s name had barely escaped his lips before Jeremy was interrupting him with, “I need to talk to you, just for a second.”

Jean’s fear washed over him. Jean came to Marseille often, whenever he needed a place to walk and think. He expected Riko to come here looking for him, but he forgot Jeremy knew about this place too.

“You can’t be here,” Jean said. “It’s too dangerous right now.”

Jeremy’s eyes searched his face. It was nighttime but his skin was warm as always, like he’d been waiting in a patch of sunlight.

“It’s too dangerous, as usual,” Jean added.

Jeremy shook his head. “I-”

He was too close, the skin of his arm brushing Jean’s ear where it was pressed into the concrete. The wild urge to grab Jeremy and flip their positions suddenly seized him, his legs nearly vibrating with the need of it. He swallowed the feeling, and stood as still as he possibly could, feeling his muscles twitch from the tension.

“Can’t you take a hint?” said Jean. He tilted forward, just a bit, just to get in Jeremy’s face, packing as much disdain as he could into the eye contact. _Your presence is a bother._

 _After all these years?_ said the tightening of Jeremy’s eyes, the tension in the flare of his nostrils.

Out loud, Jean said, “You and me -- it’s too much. It’s too dangerous for us both, and everyone around us. Kevin’s already -- If you don’t stay away from me, people are going to start getting hurt.” He hesitated and then said, “It’s easier for everyone if we just do what he wants.”

Moonlight made the amber in Jeremy’s eyes glint gold. Like a Klimt painting. Jeremy took a step back, but not out of agreement, eyes searching Jean’s impatiently.

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

Jean raised an eyebrow.

Jeremy hesitated. “Well. I mean, if you actually want me to, I will. But if you’re only saying that because of Riko --”

“Of course I’m saying it because of Riko.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” said Jeremy.

“I need you to be afraid of him,” said Jean. “Otherwise, he’ll kill you.”

They both fell silent. Somewhere in the distance, an alley cat yowled.

“Jean. You are,” Jeremy started and then stopped.

Jean didn’t speak, but inspected an old pile of cardboard boxes just over Jeremy’s shoulder. If he opened his mouth he didn’t know what truthful thing might come out and he didn’t trust himself to be the villain he knew he was when Jeremy was looking at him like that.

Streetlight cast faint glow on the boxes, as non-threatening as they were, the dark shadows they cast looked ominous. Jean imagined someone had been mugged here, more than once. There was a splatter of something dark against the ground and the far off wall that looked like old grime and the moon lit it up like a neon warning sign.

“You. You’re just. You’ll bullheaded and you’re never kind and you literally destroy everything you touch,” said Jeremy. “You’re frustrating as hell, in more ways than one, but one thing you’re not is a sheep.”

Jeremy exhaled, loudly, running both hands through his hair in frustration.

Jean eyes darted to him just long enough to take in the way the ends of his hair stuck up and then looked away.

Jeremy’s eyes were bright.

“And watching you try to be something meek, for him? It’s painful. Because you’re also fucking incredible, and hot, and so smart and-”

“Jeremy,” interrupted Jean.

“You can’t be contained. And watching him try, stuffing you in that suffocating Underworld with no way out, it makes me want to kill him, because he’s put this idea in your head that you’re only capable of what he’s given you when you are so much more -- more -- I’m not saying this right but-”

“Jeremy,” said Jean.

“I’m not naive. I know how powerful he is. I know I don’t have as much power as him, it’s why I can’t survive in the Underworld when he can. It’s why I keep going down there anyway, because every time I see you, I think, ‘this time, this time I’m not going to watch him sip champagne while I can’t pull myself off the floor. This time I’m going to dance with him. I’ll be strong enough.’”

Jean didn’t interrupt him again, just kept his gaze trained on the collar of Jeremy’s shirt because if he didn’t, if he looked Jeremy in the eye, he’d do what every cell in his body was straining for him to do. Lean forward.

“I saw Kevin,” said Jeremy. “He told me what you were going to do. I think he thought I’d tell you not to do it. But he’s wrong.”

Jeremy took a breath. “I know you. I know when you say you’re going to sink a ship, Titanic’s going down. When you say it’s been a little chilly in Pompeii lately…” He smiled. “Ciao Pompeii. When you say you’re going to do something, you do it.”

Jean was silent.

The streets of Marseille were quiet this time of night - late enough the local clubs had turned off their music, early enough for the bright peak of blue morning light to start filling out the black holes in the shadows.

“He doesn’t own you,” added Jeremy. “You don’t belong to him.”

Jean watched the stars above them start to fade, more and more with each passing minute. Jeremy called him bullheaded, but he was even more stubborn than Jean. He’d stick like glue to Jean’s side - which put him right in the line of fire.         

Blankly, and because it was blank, it was vicious, Jean said, “I don’t belong to you either.”

He pushed off the wall, shouldered Jeremy out of the way, and walked away.

 

* * *

 

It was never morning at Eden’s Twilight. The club was always full swing, the party nonstop, the air sick with neon and glitter.

Riko wasn’t there.

Shame.

Cerberus was standing guard on top of the center bar, dancing together like they were born for it, like an imaginary string was tied around each of their elbows and hips and knees, pushing and pulling each other without ever touching.

When they saw him, they didn’t stop, not quite, but they moved slower, the tilt of each of their heads a question. _Where have you been? What’s going on?_ Apprehensive. _Where’s Riko?_

Jean didn’t catch their eyes, slipping through the ranks of the dead to an empty barstool. He let himself in behind the counter and found his oldest wine. The label had faded, scratched off from being passed often from hand to hand until it wound up in Jean’s, bits of peeling paper and wax seal all that was left to show its age. Jean held it gingerly, until his fingertips turned the wax into something malleable, and he was able to brush the seal away.

He placed it on the bar’s counter, just as Cerberus dropped in beside him. One of them - the boy - ran a finger down the side of the dark glass.

Jean leaned forward, gaze drifting to beyond Cerberus to the dance floor, half keeping an eye out for any disasters Riko may have left him.

“Where did we get this?” asked Cerberus, a girl.

“It was a gift from Athena about two hundred years ago,” replied Jean.

“Is it poisoned?” asked Cerberus, the other girl.

“Probably!” replied Cerberus, the boy.

“She wouldn’t!” said Cerberus, the first girl, and then they popped the cork and took a sniff. “I can’t tell, is it made with cherries or pomegranate?” which made the three of them all grin at once.

Jean sighed. The whites of their teeth looked lavender under the black lights. They poured it expertly, wiping a tear from the mouth of the bottle with a white napkin when finished.

He thumbed the small, ornate decoration at the bottom of his glass, lost in thought.

Distantly, he registered that Cerberus was talking but all he could see was the dance floor ahead of him, bodies moving like leaves move in a hurricane. It didn’t look like dancing anymore. All he could see were their mouths, open and gasping like fish, and their cheekbones, highlighted by sweat, and flashing lights, and white bone.

The pits of their eye sockets were empty and then not, creatures moving too wildly for Jean to see exactly when the change took place, these dead things, these souls remembering their bodies and mourning the absence.

He let his eyes drag down their bodies, taking them in as intrusively as if he was standing there touching them, noting the meatless thighs, the slope of their hard rib cages, protruding grotesquely regardless of their stomachs (some bloated, some not there at all and leaving an unpleasant indent instead).

He wanted to hate them. He sighed and took a sip of his wine.

But he didn’t, couldn’t hate them. Not even slightly. The dead had no names. They had no family, and nowhere to go but to him, whom they trusted absolutely to take care of them, to set up a safe haven for them to dance their afterlife away.

He touched his own cheek. It was colder than he knew was comfortable. When all one did was hang out with the dead, that’s exactly what one started to resemble. That’s the result of twelve months of the year in winter, drinking dark wine and staring at ultraviolet instead of sun.

He took a huge gulp of wine, swishing it around his mouth, staining his teeth and gums a rich purple. He opened his mouth to breathe in, to taste the wine’s flavor and then looked at his reflection in the glass. The panes of his face were sharp, distorted by the curve. His reflection scowled at him.

He felt ill, the anger in his stomach twitching from being still for too long. He needed coffee. He needed to move. He needed to find Riko.

But all he wanted was to find Jeremy.

“Fine,” he said out loud. “Fuck.”

 

* * *

 

The apartment seemed to breathe like plants breathe, like wind makes curtains breathe, like the flow of water from a faucet breathes.

Jean pushed open the door, careful not to disturb the knob, the keyhole of which was sprouting. Water was running somewhere inside the apartment. Jean could hear the splash of it as it hit against something glass - porcelain? A sink or a bathtub maybe? The door let out a soft noise as he passed it, a protest of grinding hinges that didn’t fully shut.

It was bright inside, the early morning sun yawning gracefully into wakefulness, sending speckled bursts of light to the floor through the leaves of the plants in front of the windows. Jean took note of the lazy dust motes in the air, and through them, he could see Jeremy’s back, hunched in concentration as he worked on something just out of Jean’s line of sight.

He said Jeremy’s name, his voice cutting and loud in contrast to the space.

Jeremy’s arm, which was working busily, slowed at the sound of Jean’s voice, but Jeremy didn’t turn.

They’d known each other too long for the uncertainty to hang in the air like this, the awkward still of a misjudged situation.

Jeremy always seemed to know somehow that when others did something to hurt someone else, it was because of something else going on in their lives, the foul thing a result of an ingrained response more than an intrinsic desire to hurt. Jeremy had a patience Jean admired to the point of jealousy, the way negativity seemed to slip off him like water.

But Jean had been cruel. He’d meant to wound. The vulnerability Jeremy shown before had vanished, and all that was left was the cool distance between them.

Plants folded in on themselves as Jean stepped past, their vines and stems curling out of the way though that did nothing to space them from the spreading black rot each footprint left. Rustic wooden countertops became green and weathered as driftwood, brick cracking where he brushed against a wall to sidestep a dozing cat.

He said Jeremy’s name again. This time the spring god turned, his face unreadable. Jean noted the dirt black stains on his hands and the unpotted plant next to him.

Jean, who was not usually one for speaking first in any given conversation, couldn’t think of a thing to say, and Jeremy, who was not usually one to hold back in any given conversation, waited with a still mouth. His expression was blank, but his hands were anxious, fiddling with the blue leaf of the unpotted plant, which was either made flowerless or too new to have bloomed.

“I,” started Jean with difficulty. He stood right in front of Jeremy, and then glanced down at the plant. It was easier to talk to an inanimate object that couldn’t reply.

“You were right,” he said at last. “About--”

Jeremy interrupted him by pushing the plant into Jean’s hands. Jean’s voice caught, and he stared down at the mix of roots and soil seeping between his fingers. It was moving, blooming, bits of color poking from the green.

His thumb brushed the roots. It did not wilt but it flinched, and Jean held it very still.

They both watched, breath held carefully, waiting for the plant to either die, or not. When the stem remained green, when the filaments kept their color, when nothing happened, Jean brushed the purple petals with the edge of his thumb.

The flower shivered but did not die.

This close to the window, Jean heard the howling cars from the streets below, and the sound of cicadas, screeching like they do in the summer.

Jeremy thought he could change what a plant was at its core, and so he did. And he thought he was the weak one; didn’t Jeremy see he had it backwards?

Jean looked at him, and Jeremy glanced up, triumphant.

For all intents and purposes, Jean was the devil, and there was something extraordinarily satisfying about that. The knowledge that he could burn entire civilizations to the ground was something he held in the back of his mind - not to do anything with, but just keep warm and cozy back there, a deliberate note-to-self stating clearly and with no small amount of arrogance - _I am terrible. Great and terrible._

He felt like doing something great and terrible.

He pulled Jeremy in by the collar of his shirt and kissed him.

It wasn’t a kiss for apology or explanation, it wasn’t a kiss that demanded an audience, it was a kiss with one single, animalistic intention: to get your attention, and keep it.

Jeremy went still with surprise that, to his credit, lasted maybe a blink before he was pressing back, chasing Jean’s mouth like they had a score to settle. Jean barely remembered to put the plant down, and that was only because he needed his hands for something infinitely more important: to pull Jeremy closer.

It wasn’t a kiss that took more than it gave, and Jeremy seemed to realize that, pressing hard against Jean until Jean felt himself stumble back a bit with the force of it. Their mouths came together again and again, a push and pull kind of game, of which Jean had no idea who was winning. Jeremy’s lips were warm on his, and Jean nipped at his lips, and then his tongue. Jeremy’s hands slid down, finding purchase between Jean’s jacket and his shirt, holding him just to feel the heat of his skin under his clothes.

Jean stopped kissing him only long enough to find some counter space, picking Jeremy up by the ass and setting him on it. Distantly he heard the sound of heavy objects falling off, but it was hard to concentrate with Jeremy’s hands dancing across Jean’s stomach, his abs jumping at the touch, arousal hitting him like a lightning bolt. He sucked in a breath and pressed closer, until there was no closer to go, connected from mouth to hips.

Jeremy’s teeth tugged in Jeans lower lip and Jean groaned, tasting Jeremy's laugh as he kissed the seam of his mouth, tongues curling together. He felt Jeremy mouth at the soft skin on his neck and wondered why they didn't do this sooner, before he felt Jeremy up against him, felt his open mouthed groan as Jean’s fingers tug at his hair.

Jean caught Jeremy’s gaze, his eyes dark and questioning. He brought one hand up to drag a thumb down the pulsing vein on Jeremy’s neck and felt more than heard Jeremy’s sharp intake of breath.

In the back of his mind, he registered the feel of wet soil between his fingers and Jeremy’s skin and knew he was leaving a mark. He wanted to leave more.

“What you said before,” said Jean, between dropping kisses on the other side of Jeremy’s neck. “You were right.”

“I know,” Jeremy replied. His fingers did nothing shyly, gripping Jean’s hair and pulling back his head so he could keep him still. “Don’t forget it.”

Jean responded by surging forward, capturing Jeremy’s mouth in a searing kiss, to which Jeremy responded in kind, his hips jerking forward. Jean was hard, and he made a noise as they lined up, friction a dizzying relief. They both _needed_ , and they searched it out, grinding unevenly until Jean slowed down to find a rhythm, until finding a good hard rub, until it became more about bodies than mouth.

Words spilled between them sparsely but without filter, mumbled curses -- _Oh fuck, Jean_ \-- and demands -- _there, faster_ \-- and confessions -- _when you touch me it makes me fucking crazy_.

Pants were a bother. Jeremy reached between them and felt along Jean’s length, stroking him through his clothes. Jean shuddered. His hands tightened on Jeremy's ass, unable to stop himself from rocking into it as Jeremy made a sound, a low groan in the back of his throat. His hands slipped into Jean’s pants to get a better grip and Jean abandoned all pretense of control, gasping as Jeremy worked him right up to the edge. He pushed Jeremy's hand out of the way and thrust against Jeremy, hard, and purposefully slow. Jeremy’s breath was catching, stuttering and as Jean adjusted Jeremy’s leg to get a better angle, he felt Jeremy make a high, pained sound.

Jean paused. Jeremy made another sound, this one of obvious complaint.

“Don’t you dare,” he ground out. “Don't stop.”

When Jean paused again, it was only to strip them both, quickly and between tantalizing, distracted kisses, and hands roaming across bare skin and when Jean rutted up against him again and again, Jeremy whimpered, wrapping his legs around Jean to urge him faster. Jean complied, hands splayed across Jeremy’s back, as Jeremy bit a bruise into his shoulder, a mark he didn't feel, too caught up in pleasure, too close to the edge to do anything other than listen to the filthy sound Jeremy made when he came.

It didn't take more than a minute for Jean to follow, shaking and tightening his grip on Jeremy’s hips.

Spent, Jean slid to the floor, Jeremy laughing as he followed him down.

They sat tangled together for a moment, catching their breath and Jeremy leaned into Jean, forehead resting next to the bruise he left on Jean’s shoulder.

He must’ve been able to sense Jean’s hesitation, the way his hands drifted to his own side instead of wrapping around Jeremy’s.

Jeremy snorted and said, “You’re not going to hurt me.”

“You sure about that?” said Jean, lips quirking.

Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Your hands kill plants but they don’t hurt me.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“Do something about it.” Jeremy pulled Jean in for another kiss, which turned into two, before Jean pulled away suddenly. Jeremy’s eyebrows tugged together, and he opened his mouth to complain when Jean shushed him, motioning at Jeremy’s cat.

Every time Jean had been here, the cat was asleep, peacefully basking in the sunlight. But now, its eyes were alive with fire, the ends of its fur standing as it spit and recoiled. Jean and Jeremy exchanged a confused look.

The cat wasn’t looking at them. All its energy was concentrated on the door to the apartment, the one that never shut properly.

Jean and Jeremy froze, picturesque surprise as they waited with wide eyes. There was no one there, but footsteps, faint but there all the same, could be heard coming up the stairs, which was not normally something to be frightened of, but Jeremy lived on the top floor. All those steps? Any reasonable person would’ve taken the elevator.

A floorboard creaked outside and the footsteps stopped, hesitant.

Jean felt fear acutely, like something icy cold pressing against the back of his neck, the knowledge that the person he couldn’t see was here to hurt him. Jeremy shook him. Jean snapped out of it long enough to see Jeremy had pulled his pants back on and Jean rushed to do the same, fumbling the belt buckle with shaking hands. Riko didn’t know where Jeremy lived. Did he?

The footsteps started again, faster this time, and Jeremy pulled Jean to his feet, springing into action with more finesse than Jean himself was capable of. Jean stumbled as he followed Jeremy to the window, where there was no downstairs, no fire escape, just open air.

“Are you serious?” Jean hissed, glaring down at the twenty story drop.

Jeremy hesitated, just long enough to glance back at the front door as it creaked open.

Jean’s head whipped back to see a familiar head of black hair and a thin tattoo standing in the doorway. The cat hissed again and then jumped.

Riko made a disgusted, outraged sound as the cat attacked, its claws burying into his skin and shirt, followed by yowling and Jeremy shouting and Jean pulling Jeremy by the arm towards the window just as Riko threw the cat aside.

He tossed it like it was nothing, bits of blood splattering his face from the scratches, long cuts above his eyebrows. Red seeped into his eye, more liquid than Jean would’ve thought from a cat scratch. The clear eye was scorching, with psychopathic calm, and in the breath it took for Riko to stalk forward, Jean had already shoved Jeremy out the window.

Indignant, Riko raised his arm - to throw something? To hit Jean? - but before he reached him, Jean stumbled backwards, and fell himself.

It was a long fall.

It was the kind of fall people write stories about, the kind people wake up from dreaming and recall with shiver, the kind of fall that nestles into your brain and makes you think it’s been hours when only seconds have passed.

It was a long fall.

It was a long fall.

It was a long, long fall.

When he woke up, his jaw was aching from its collision with the sidewalk. It was a battle to get his eyes to crack open, the bones rearranging themselves in a more structured skull, black spots clearing from his vision, and he groaned as he turned onto his back to stare up at the apartment they’d evacuated.

Riko’s head was visible only long enough for Jean to account for it, before it disappeared back into Jeremy’s apartment.

Jean groaned again, and turned over, looking for Jeremy. It didn’t take him long to spot Jeremy, only a few paces away laying in the exact same position. He pushed himself up onto his feet, legs more gelatinous than solid, shocks racing through his body.

“What now?” croaked Jeremy, wiping soot from his gold hair. “Are we going on the run?”

“Now?” said Jean. “We’re going to Eden’s.”

Jeremy faced him fully, still sitting on the ground like his legs didn’t want to cooperate.  “ _What?_ Why?”

Jean reached out a hand and helped pull him to his feet.“It’s the last place he’d expect us.”

“It’s literally the first place he’ll check,” said Jeremy.

Jean paused. “Then we have the element of surprise.”

Jeremy stared at him for a moment and then shook his head. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I’m going to need your help,” said Jean.

 

* * *

 

The nightclub was the same as always, clogged with people, most dead, some not, music pounding the air so loud it barely registered as more than a thundering heartbeat under Jean’s skin.

Jeremy released Jean’s hand, wandering through the crowd as Jean made a beeline towards the center bar.

Cerberus stretched languidly upon seeing him, all eyes distant at something just over his shoulder.

“Where’s Riko?” Jean demanded.

Cerberus straightened, exchanging looks. Their bodies moved as one, sliding down to the floor like water, the material of their slip dresses shimmering in the light. The clothes were torn artfully, scraps of cloth draping across their collarbones provocatively.

Static crackled in the air. He knew they knew where Riko was. They guarded the Underworld, which means they kept close track of every threat.

“He was looking for you,” they chorused, synchronized, neatly avoiding the question. None of them met his eye.

Riko was here, or coming.

He swore, and turned try and spot Jeremy in the crowd. He didn’t have to look far; Jeremy was smart enough to stick close, not dancing, but waiting by Jean’s shoulder, though he wasn’t looking at Jean but at something in the distance. Jean turned, to try and see what’d captured both Cerberus’s and Jeremy’s attention.

Kevin Day.

He was flanked by two small people Jean didn’t know. They wore identical bored looks, as though not surrounded by the souls of the dead. Jean’s feet were moving before he registered it, making their way to Kevin, who had no idea what was about to go down and no right to be here besides.

Kevin saw him coming, and stiffened, not making any special effort to avoid his gaze or look away. Neon bursts of strobe light lit Kevin’s face up in white and Jean couldn’t help but see the imprint of his skull.

 _We don’t have time for this_ , thought Jean, stopping. Jeremy, who’d been hot on his tail, barely avoided crashing into his back.

Jean pointed up at the speaker system, wordlessly.

Jeremy shot him a look of confusion before a flicker of realization flashed across his face, and he turned his head to stare up at it.

“Jean,” Kevin shouted, trying to push through the dancing crowd. “What’s going on?”

Jean moved to stand between Jeremy and Kevin, but it was a futile effort. As much of a God as Kevin was, he could barely push through the tortuous dance and the endless parade of people.    

Jean frowned.

The two gods on either side of Kevin were giving it their best effort to push off the bodies, who grabbed and pulled, in complete disregard of the knives slashing off their hands. Souls were not human; their hands were not necessary limbs.

Beside him, Jeremy started shaking. Jean turned, to see a trail of blood dripping from Jeremy’s nose. Alarmed, he pulled at his arm, but Jeremy just held his hand, staring hard at the sound system. Jean followed his gaze, grim.

Bright, electric blue flowers had burst from the mesh wiring, and they were growing. Huge, ropelike vines twisted down the walls; blooming thorns and sharp-petaled holly spread like weeds across the dark walls, cracking the floor it touched and wrapping around empty bottles and tightening until they exploded with glass.

Bodies closest to the destruction flinched away, but the greenery had no patience for them. It snaked through the crowd, digging its roots into the ground whether there was space or not, chrysanthemums sprouting in the uneven cracks in the floor, barstools utterly reclaimed by the earth.

Without the music, without the regular undulating beat that flowed across the floor and through the room, the souls had nothing to dance to. They shivered and twitched, confused, turning to face one another without recognition.

Jean felt a pang in his chest. Zombie-like, they had no direction, no purpose.

Jeremy dropped to one knee, just as Jean saw a flash of black out of the corner of his eye.

The hit came from nowhere. One minute he was looking at Jeremy, the next reverberating, bright pain was lacing his jaw. He barely had time to turn before another hit, an electrifying burst of power and energy that sent his heart into palpitations as the lightning bolt hit his chest.

“You’re fucking with me, right?” said Riko. “You’re absolutely fucking with me.”

Jean pushed himself to his feet. A gob of saliva trailed from his mouth to the floor, and as he brushed it away with his arm, he felt his mouth fill with the taste of iron. He spat.

“I’m a god,” said Jean, flexing his fists. “A god as much as you.”

Riko sneered. The anger in his cold eyes flashed. “We’ve gone over this, haven’t we?”

“Have we?” said Jean. “Run it by me again.”

Riko’s expression twisted, ugly as he made a grab for Jean and Jean dodged out of the way, thinking of Kevin’s withered hand, probably never again to twitch with life. He scrambled to get between Riko and Jeremy, who braced one hand on his knee, and managed to pull himself up to a standing position without faltering.

The self-proclaimed king of gods thrust his hand out in a sweeping motion, as electricity crackled between his fingertips. He strode forward, and Jean stood his ground, knowing if he dodged, Jeremy wouldn’t have a chance. Two heavy hands landed on his shoulders, and Jean winced, trying to hold his own against the current of high voltage running through his body.

Riko pressed harder, and then pushing, throwing Jean back.

He crashed into Jeremy, sending them tumbling to the ground as Riko took another step forward, still glowering. Satisfaction flashed across his face, but rage had tightened Riko’s eyes into slits, and he reached out again, this time to grab Jean around the throat.

Riko hadn’t accounted for the bodies. They barrelled into him, confusion channeling their violence -- they knew who Hades was, and to them, he was their only king.

Touched by their loyalty, but limbs still twitching with aftershocks, Jean reached behind him for Jeremy, who didn’t reach back. Grit and sweat and a spinning head made it hard for Jean to see. He blinked away the soot and ignored a pounding headache, eyes searching out Jeremy through the ocean of people, until he saw his crumpled body a few feet away, pulled by the no longer dancing souls, who seemed to have remembered some kind of purpose. They dragged Jeremy’s body towards the swirling black abyss at the edges of the dance floor - Tartarus.

The brief sentimental feeling Jean felt for their loyalty vanished, and he pitched himself forward, pushing dead hands out of the way.  

They made sounds of discomfort as Jean shooed them, smarter than to get between Jean and the weakened Jeremy, whose sluggish movements suggested he couldn’t stay down here for much longer.

“Give him here,” shouted one of Kevin’s companions over the din of chaos. “We’re getting you both out of here!”

Jean turned to reply, when he felt another lightning bolt sear through him, pain lighting up every neuron in his body. He groaned as he fell, face smashing into the ground.

Riko’s chest was heaving but his body looked barely battered by the onslaught of souls attacking him. He swept them aside like they were nothing, ignoring the way they kept coming despite, his eyes focused on one goal: Jean, whose arms shook as he pushed himself up.

Riko opened his mouth to speak, black eyes glittering with victory.

He hadn’t accounted for Kevin either.

The second brother was silent and fast, slippery as water and twice as resilient. He stepped in front of Jean, and said something to Riko, something Jean couldn’t hear over the sound of blood rushing through his ears.

Whatever Riko’s response, it pissed Kevin off. Jean caught sight of Kevin’s ruined arm, just enough to see that all that was left blackened was the hand, his forearm and wrist returned to normal color if a few shades paler.

It was a battle different than Jean and Riko’s battle, this fight between the two eldest brothers. Kevin hit him with no holding back; Riko courteous enough to do the same.

Behind Jean, Jeremy was struggling to lift himself up, eyes heavy lidded as he found Jean’s hand.

“What happened to Kevin’s arm?” he asked.

“Riko thought Kevin was getting too powerful,” Jean said, pulling Jeremy to his feet, and holding most of his weight as he looked around for Cerberus. “He destroyed his arm.”

“What?” said Jeremy weakly. “That doesn’t make sense. Why now?”

He wasn’t wrong.

There was a crash and both of them whipped around to see Kevin buried in the ruins of the center bar. His companions stood in front of him, blocking him from Riko’s sight.

“You’re right; it doesn’t,” said Jean. “But we don’t have time to figure it out. Kevin won’t last much longer and we have to get you out of here.”

“I’m good. Taking a breather but I’ll be back in the hustle in a sec,” said Jeremy, with a grin he couldn’t hold without wincing.

Jean scowled and pulled Jeremy along. “If someone pushes you into Tartarus, there’s no coming out. You don’t have enough strength to defend yourself right now.”

“What, I totally do,” said Jeremy, affronted.

Jean paused, remembering what Jeremy said earlier, about not feeling powerful enough. To Jean, Jeremy was more than enough, more generous and forgiving than anyone else he’d ever met and that meant something, especially when held up in comparison. Against Jeremy, Riko had nothing.  

The plants had broken not only the sound system but the lights, and instead of strobing, all was still. A bright orange flasher had fallen to the floor nearby, and Jeremy was backlit by it, hair orange and red and gold like a sun was setting behind him. His skin was dewy with sweat, parlor sickly pale.

“I love you,” said Jean, seized by sudden urgency.

Jeremy gave him a strange, long look. Then, he pulled Jean’s face in and crushed his mouth against Jean’s. It was a quick kiss, and they both tasted the blood on the other’s tongue.

“That’s sweet,” said Riko.

He was standing with a limp, and Jean noticed with no small amount of surprise that all that remained of one arm was a dripping, bloody stump. Despite this disadvantage, Riko’s eyes were wild with crazy, hyperfocused on Jeremy and Jean in a way Jean knew meant Riko’s inhibitions were gone; he had nothing to lose.

Jean didn’t know where Kevin was, but he hoped his brother’s companions had defended him, at least enough to help him escape. He had no such hopes for himself and stood up, with limbs still shaking and twitching from electric shock.

Riko leveled a thunderbolt at him.

Jean was lucky; Riko’s aim was off, forgetting to account for the missing weight of one limb. He dodged easily, sidestepping the bolt with a stumble.

“Kevin told me something,” said Jean, “He said he tried to help me and Jeremy.”

Riko’s lip curled in disgust. He didn’t immediately launch another bolt, which meant he was listening or needed the time to gather his strength.

“So I’m thinking about it,” said Jean, pulling himself straight, trying to hide his wince with a scowl. “And I realize it’s obvious. Why is it that you and Kevin can spend as much time in the Underworld as you want, without any repercussions? When other gods can’t? What makes you king?”

Riko’s expression shuttered. “I’m the most powerful.”

“We are,” Jean corrected. “Zeus, Poisidon and Hades, we’re the three most powerful of the Gods. So imagine Kevin gave Jeremy some of that power, enough of it that he’d be able to enter the Underworld. But that’s a lot. If we gave him that much, there wouldn’t be enough left for Kevin to enter the Underworld.”

“Kevin’s not that giving,” sneered Riko.

Jean’s eyes narrowed, and he answered coldly, “If he wasn’t, why did you take all the power in his right arm?”

Riko didn’t reply, which was as good as confirmation.

That’s why Kevin hadn’t told him what he’d done to try and help him and Jeremy. If Jean hadn’t believed Riko when he called Jean weak, if Jean had let himself believe that he had just as much power, he would’ve given it to Jeremy without question.

Riko was quiet as rubbed at his stump of an arm, smearing away blood to get a good look at the bone. He examined it unconcerned, as if noting its absence and deciding it inconsequential. Bright bursts of white light snapped between the fingertips of his remaining hand as he gathered up the energy for another attack.

“So there you have it, then. You can be together.” His grin was messy with missing teeth and blood. “So be together. Give him your power and he can be ruler of the Underworld.”

Riko paused. “Of course, that means _you_ can’t be. Also, I’m assuming you even have enough power left to give?” His voice dropped to a low tone. “You look about dead on your feet, Jean.”

Jean snarled and lunged. Riko met him halfway, his hands lit up with electricity that Jean narrowly managed to dodge. The undead, relentless as ever, followed close behind, useful enough to distract Riko if nothing else, as Riko shoved them and sent them flying.

“What am I saying? You’re in rough shape, but you know, I think Jeremy might actually be dead.”

His heart iced over. Jean whipped around, eyes falling on Jeremy’s failing body.

He wasn’t dead, but his breath was coming in so shallow, Jean could barely see the rise and fall of his chest. Riko was right; Jeremy didn’t have long now. Jean stared at him, indecision like a thousand needles to his lungs.

“Go ahead, Jean, give him your power.”

Jean wanted to, badly. He wanted to make sure Jeremy would be okay, even if he himself wasn’t. But if he gave Jeremy that strength, Jean wouldn’t have enough to fight Riko and Riko would, without hesitation, kill him.

Riko saw as well as Jeremy the moment Jean made his decision, the moment Jean lowered his hands, eyes empty. This was one death he couldn’t bear.

Riko laughed.

“Hey Riko,” said Jeremy. “Fuck you.”

Riko hadn’t accounted for Jeremy.

Rope-like tendrils of green rose from the floor as blood gushed down Jeremy’s nose, and Riko barely had time to account for them before dark green cacti stemmed from the vines, and wrapped around Riko’s arms and legs, bright, poisonous-looking leaves streaked with black and red covered his face. Riko screamed where it touched him.

Jeremy said, “I’m not taking power from Jean. But I’ll take it from you.”

Riko’s body began convulsing, as cacti bloomed from his eye sockets, sharp-edged vines tore open his mouth as one hand groped around with last vestiges of life, sparks flying uselessly between his fingertips. The smell of burnt forest filled the air, and Jean realized Riko’s thunderbolts had caught on the plant life, and it was all burning.

The souls scattered as Riko dropped to the ground, fluid seeping from his nose, his mouth, his eyes and Jean could see his mouth open and closing, choking, still alive because he was a god, and gods do not go quietly.      

Jeremy’s arm fell uselessly to his side, and Jean tore his eyes away from the wreckage that was Riko Moriyama to focus on Jeremy. Jeremy’s eyes were bright, wide, and he had a glow about him though every part of him quivered like a leaf.

“Are you-” Jean hesitated.

“Okay?” Jeremy replied, getting to his feet, still shaking. His strength seemed to be coming back to him in waves, as his shaking limbs grew steadier with each gasping breath. “Better than.”

Jean felt dizzy with relief. “You’re fine.”

“What do you say?” asked Jeremy, eyes on Riko. “Still want to throw him into Tartarus?”

Jean looked over too. “Seems a bit overkill at this point.”

“Want to do it anyway?”

“Absolutely.”

 

* * *

 

A man stood on the roof of a run-down building, smoking a thin cigarette. He scowled out into the night, conscious of a second presence at his back. He did nothing to stop the cigarette from being plucked out of his hands, and instead turned his head to face the neighboring building with a look of disdain.

“Too loud,” Neil grumbled.

Next to him, Andrew focused on his cigarette, coaxing it with a deep drag, before following Neil's gaze to the neighboring building. It looked like an abandoned apartment complex in a good part of town, windows covered up with black paint while colorful murals and vine-like graffiti laced up the edges of the walls. Where some of the black had chipped away, Neil could make out flashing bright lights.

“Is Kevin over there again?” he asked, digging into his pockets for the snap Zippo lighter he knew he had. The cigarette had gone out.   

Andrew didn’t reply, just blew on the tip of it with hot breath, where ash clumped and scattered in the wind until the end glowed, burning orange and curling smoke.

“Thanks,” said Neil, and reached for it. Andrew leaned away, holding it just out of reach and then took a drag. He blew the smoke in Neil’s disgruntled face.

So, fuck six months.

They should have known that looking for concessions had always been a waste of time. When the club burned down with Riko inside, trapped in Tartarus, the remaining souls had nowhere to go. They fled, running out into the streets in a disorganized havoc. It took Kevin, Andrew, Neil, Jean, and Jeremy to round up the lost dead, though the question still remained: what to do with them now that there was no Underworld.

There had to be an Underworld. The dead needed it, even if Jean did not. However, there was no written rule stating that the Underworld had to actually be under the world.

Jean built a new club on top of the remains of the old one. The old one was a basement now, inaccessible to everybody but Jean, who, according to Kevin, liked to go down there and listen to the echoing screams of Riko trying to claw his way out of Tartarus.

The souls of the dead no longer danced there, nor did they dance on the ground level. The new club was several stories tall, each floor a different section of nightclub, with different guests. There was a floor for the living, a floor for the gods, but as far as he knew, the roof was blocked off.

Neil breathed in the smoke, and then coughed, turning fully to look at the club next door.

Someone fell off the roof.

If the body hadn’t silent in its shrieks, if it hadn’t been nearly translucent and white as a ghost besides, Neil might’ve worried. As it was, sometimes the dancing bodies danced too hard and toppled over the edge.

“He should put up a fence or something,” said Andrew, who’d watched the descent with bored eyes. He dropped the cigarette, crushing the lit end with his heel, then spun to go back downstairs. He didn’t ask if Neil was coming.

Neil stood there for a moment longer taking in the scene on their neighbor's roof, which was too high in the sky for the city below to note the lights flashing blue and purple, or to worry about the pulsating beat. Through the bodies Neil could just make out three figures dancing above everyone else atop a center bar, wearing shift dresses of fur and bone and just under the roof, the topmost windows were bursting with thick leaves. Though he didn’t see them tonight, he knew Jean and Jeremy were among the crowd, likely sitting at the center bar, lounging on the barstools like they were thrones. 

Just then, one soul bumped warily along the edge of the roof. It stilled itself - an unusual behavior for a creature that never ceased its dancing - and then slowly turned to face Neil. He was just close enough to see the whites of its eyes, the way its neck gave a jolting twitch as it stared at him, unquestioning, club lights flashing across its face.

He shivered a bit, noted the eerie, cold tingle at the tip of his spine, and then went back inside.

 


End file.
